


New Fears

by inoubliable



Series: Skin&Earth [4]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Actual angel Bill Denbrough, Angst, Eddie-centric, Falling In Love, M/M, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, gay AS FUCK Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 15:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12609408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inoubliable/pseuds/inoubliable
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak is thirteen years old. He thinks he might be in love.--Eddie isn't scared of goblins and ghosts and demons anymore. He has felt true fear, and seen true evil, and he knows now that monsters are just a façade, horrible faces that hide something even worse. There are truly scary things in this world. Things like losing his friends, or fighting a child-eating clown, or being in love with Richie Tozier.





	New Fears

**Author's Note:**

> "I left my body down on her knees,  
> over the bedside, watching you breathe."  
> -[New Fears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7h6uakby-k), Lights

Eddie Kaspbrak is thirteen.

It is dead. He watched It die, an ugly crumbling defeat in the Derry sewers. As far as he's concerned, everything is okay. It's over. After months of horror, they're safe again.

His dreams don't agree.

He wakes up in a cold sweat more often than not, sometimes screaming but mostly struck dumb with horror. He doesn't remember all of his nightmares, but he lies in bed and tries to, and that's worse, because he thinks of lepers and darkness and clowns and it feels real all over again.

He doesn't tell his friends. There's a kind of stunned silence that follows the defeat of something so evil and otherworldly, and none of the Losers have broken it yet. Even Richie is subdued.

Which is another problem in and of itself.

Richie.

Things have been different, since It. Eddie feels like he's been thrust into adulthood, forced to grow up too fast. All of them have. Bill is a shadow of his former self, no less wonderful but much less recklessly enthusiastic. Stan rarely smiles. Richie, who has never once had a care in the world, has started to develop a little line in between his eyebrows, a wrinkle born of newfound concern.

Eddie thinks about that wrinkle a lot.

He remembers noticing it for the first time, strangely enough, in the kitchen of Neibolt house ( _It's house_ ), when his arm was snapped in half and he was so sure he was going to die. Richie had grabbed his face and forced Eddie to look at him, and Eddie had decided that he didn't mind Richie being the last thing he saw.

But then Eddie doesn't die, and he has plenty of time to think about that moment.

His arm aches whenever he does, a phantom pain even though it's fully healed and the cast has been off for a month. It doesn't look any different now, but sometimes he thinks about how one half had hung so unnaturally from the other, thoroughly broken, and he gets so worked up that he has to puff on his inhaler for a few long minutes.

He never feels like he needs to use his inhaler when he's with Richie. It's kind of ironic, because Richie is the one who keeps his spare, just in case. He's done so for years. It's the kind of thing that's weird because of how not weird it is. It's just a fact at this point. Eddie has asthma, and Richie keeps an inhaler in his back pocket.

But then It happens, and it's like the monster's defeat has cleared his vision and he can see things the way they actually are.

Bill doesn't carry around Eddie's inhaler. Neither does Stan. Ben probably would, because he's so casually thoughtful, and Beverly has started carrying a bag and could fit it in with all her random girl things, but they don't.

It's Richie.

It's always Richie.

Eddie isn't scared of goblins and ghosts and demons anymore. He has felt true fear, and seen true evil, and he knows now that monsters are just a façade, horrible faces that hide something even worse. There are truly scary things in this world. Things like losing his friends, or fighting a child-eating clown, or being in love with Richie Tozier.

Eddie knows what love means. He's seen the movies, and he's read the books. Love is that stupid feeling when you just wanna be with that person all the time. When you think about them and suddenly realize you're smiling. When you can't focus on what they're saying because looking at their mouth makes you think about kissing.

Eddie goes so stupid around Richie these days that Richie is actually concerned, which means he looks at Eddie with that stupid little line between his eyebrows a lot and Eddie just wants to kiss it, kiss him, and it's awful, it's awful, it's worse than a broken arm and a giant clown and the sour sick breath of a leper.

Eddie doesn't know what his problem is. He loves all of the Losers, but it's different. Bill is handsome and so very brave, and Eddie would fight another ten killer clowns for him, but Eddie isn't in love with him. He's not in love with clean, polite Stan, who helped him tidy up his room when his cast was too clunky to work around, who allowed only Eddie to change the bandages on his face. Mike is strong and capable, and he has never said an unkind word about anyone as far as Eddie knows. Good, quiet Ben makes Eddie feel comfortable and cared for, even with the smallest of gestures, like trading his Goldfish for Eddie's plain Saltines because he knows Eddie's mom refuses to buy them. Even Beverly, who has entirely the wrong anatomy for Eddie to consider romantically, who shares her cigarettes and dirty jokes and all sorts of bad habits, holds a big part of Eddie's heart.

But most of it belongs to Richie Tozier, and it just makes no sense.

So he does what he always does when things don't make sense. He tells Bill. 

Bill has more than his fair share of problems, but he seems to enjoy it when his friends come to him with theirs. Maybe it's a distraction. Maybe Bill is actually as angelic as his big eyes and button nose imply. Whatever it is, Bill Denbrough is the only person in the world Eddie would trust with this secret.

True to form, Bill doesn't judge him, or even seem all that surprised.

"H-Have you t-told Richie?" he asks, and then laughs at the look on Eddie's face. Eddie realizes with a start that he hasn't heard Bill laugh much lately. He feels suddenly selfish.

Bill sees the look on his face and shakes his head, misunderstanding. "Don't l-luh-look so upset. It's n-not the end of the w-world."

"No, I-" Eddie doesn't know how to say what he's thinking without bringing up It and Georgie and the sadness they all share but that Bill has the biggest portion of. He closes his mouth, then opens it again, and then sighs noisily. "It's stupid."

Bill shrugs. "Not r-really. It's j-just a cr-crush."

"It's _Richie_."

Bill grins. "A b-bad crush. But j-just a cr-crush."

Eddie doesn't think it's just a crush, but he's never really had a crush before, and Bill is usually right.

"Please don't tell him," Eddie says, which is ridiculous, because Bill would never. "I just want it to go away."

It doesn't go away.

A lot of other things do. The scars that litter Stan's jaw begin to heal, turning silvery. The high-pitched squeak of Ben's voice dips sharply, wavering for awhile between boyishly high and startlingly low, incongruous with his pink, cherubic face. Bill outgrows most of his shirts, and his parents replace them with button-ups and collared polos, which most of the Losers tease him for but which also make him look very grown-up and handsome.

Eddie remains short and puny and asthmatic. He still has bad dreams. They only ease when the others are around, which is how he ends up spending most of his weekend nights at Bill's house, the unofficial Losers' clubhouse. Beverly isn't allowed to stay past dark and Mike has to be up so early at the farm that he rarely stays the night, but the rest of them pile into Bill's room on a mountain of blankets and pillows and whisper and then talk and then laugh until Bill's dad finally yells at them from down the hallway.

Eddie sleeps on the bed with Stan, because Bill is chivalrous to a fault and also because Stan is every bit as thin as he is tall and the two of them fit just fine. Bill and Ben and Richie all sleep on the floor, touching in small ways both for comfort and because Bill's room is not very big.

Stan's skin runs hot, and Bill's blankets are thick. Eddie wakes up in the night feeling sweaty and feverish. He claws out from under the covers and shifts away from Stan, unsticking their skin so he can peer over the edge of the bed. Bill is on his stomach, drooling the slightest bit onto his pillow, his hair flattened to his forehead. Ben is on his back, his arms hanging limply at his sides, making small noises that aren't quite snores. Richie is on his side, facing the bed, facing Eddie, his face lax and his curls messy from the way he has obviously tossed and turned. Richie is restless at the best of times, but especially in his sleep. Even now, his cheek is twitching, like he's talking to himself. It wouldn't surprise Eddie if he was.

Eddie stares at him for a long time, so long his eyes finally adjust and he can make out fine details, like how impossibly long Richie's eyelashes look when they're not overshadowed by his glasses. The space between his eyebrows is smooth and wrinkle-free. Eddie's heart throbs in his chest, kind of like it does when he first startles out of a dream.

Richie is scarier than any nightmare. Richie is real.

Richie sighs in his sleep and shifts onto his back. His arm flops out to the side, stretched out and reaching. Eddie allows his arm to dangle off the edge of the bed, brushing his fingers against Richie's. Richie's hand spasms, like he's grasping for Eddie. Eddie's heart thuds again.

He keeps his hand against Richie's for a long time. He isn't at all afraid that the monster under the bed is going to grab him and drag him below. The monster isn't real anymore. He and his friends killed It, and all that's left is the ghost that haunts his nightmares.

Eddie is awake now, and the only scary thing is how much he wants Richie to wake up and hold his hand properly.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic... went in an entirely different direction than what I originally planned, but I wanted to post something for this series today, so there you have it. Will these stupid boys ever kiss?
> 
> (Yes.)


End file.
